How to learn languages with music

Here's the trick nobody sells you: music is built to be replayed. Choruses come back. Hooks get stuck. You hit repeat without deciding to.

Repetition is how words stick, so a song you love does the boring part of learning for you. These five steps make the most of it.

1. Start with music you already like

Not the song a course picked for you. Your song. If you'd listen to it anyway, you'll come back to it, and coming back is the whole game.

Need ideas? We have artist picks for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian, and song picks for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.

2. Follow the lyrics line by line

Play the song and read along. Don't try to understand everything yet. Just get used to how the words look next to how they sound.

In LyricFluent the video plays above the lyrics, and the line being sung lights up, so you never lose your place.

3. Find out what it actually means

Now read the translation under each line. This is where the song stops being sounds and starts being sentences.

Stuck on one word? Tap it to see what it means on its own and hear it said. Line meaning plus word meaning is how you go from "I get the vibe" to "I get it".

4. Sing along, badly

Singing gets your mouth used to the sounds faster than reading ever will. Nobody is listening. Mumble the hard bits and belt the chorus.

5. Run it back

Add the song to your playlist and keep playing it. Each time, you'll catch a word you missed before. When the lyrics stop needing the translation, the song is yours.

In LyricFluent, each song comes with games built from its own lyrics, so the replays turn into practice.

Do it with LyricFluent

You can do all of this with a lyrics site and a notebook. LyricFluent just puts the video, every line translated, tap-a-word meanings and the games in one place. Try LyricFluent.